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The US Has Missed Its First Deadline to Reunite Separated Families

Some toddlers have been separated from their parents for so long, they barely recognize them.

Many immigrants arriving at the US-Mexico border are fleeing violent conflict, extreme poverty, and persecution. They come in search of safety, opportunity, and asylum and the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border has been widely criticized as a human rights violation. You can take action to support the reunification of families here.

However, even if authorities succeeded in raising the total number of reunited children to 38 by Tuesday’s end, the figure still falls well below the 54 children the government had said it would return to their families by the deadline, CNN reported.

Many of these children have been detained for weeks, even months, in centers far from their parents. And for some families reunited on Tuesday, what should have been a happy occasion turned bittersweet as children who hadn’t seen their parents in months cried for social workers from the arms of their unfamiliar parents, The New York Times reported.

Government agencies have attributed the delay in reuniting families to safety concerns.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “could have transferred every child in HHS care to a parent if we did not take into account child safety," HHS Chief of Staff Chris Meekins told the press on Tuesday. However, Judge Dana Sabraw, who ordered the reunification of families noted that it is the government’s obligation to reunite families and that authorities should not impose unnecessary requirements for parents to prove they are “good sponsors” for their own children.

At least 14 children will not be reunited with their parents — who either failed background checks, were determined not to be the children’s parents, or were the subject of valid abuse claims — CBS reported. And more than a dozen more children are not eligible to be reunited with their parents for various reasons.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 reversing his administration’s policy, calling, instead, for authorities to stop separating families. However, the order proposed that migrant families be held in custody together — which US detention facilities and border agencies do not have the physical space or resources to do.

The order also called on the US District Court for the Central District of California to modify the Flores settlement — a legal 1997 agreement that established limits on how long immigrant children can be detained — which the court declined to do on Monday.

The children being reunited with their families are being released from HHS custody to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — the agency overseeing detention centers for adult migrants — which in turn will release parents reunited with the children. Parents are fitted with ankle monitors to ensure that they attend scheduled court hearings on their immigration statuses, according to ICE officials.

Of the 102 children under the age of five still in government custody, the administration expects to reunite 75 children with their parents, some of whom were already deported without their children.

That’s still a small percentage of the total number of children separated from their parents at the border in recent months. The administration now has just 15 days left to reunite hundreds more migrant children with their families to meet the court-imposed deadline.